Homily for Thursday, 15 June 2017– Ferial

Thursday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 3:15- 4:1, 3-6; Psalm 95:9ab-10, 11-12, 13-14; Matthew 5:20-26

Are we able to think of values that go together with other values, such that without one of the pair of values the other is diminished or made incomplete?

Our Psalm response today offers us vivid images of values that seem naturally to exist in pairs: Kindness and truth, justice and peace, truth and justice, and justice and salvation. Unless both elements of each pair are present, one suffers for lack of the other. Truth spoken or acted without kindness will ultimately diminish the truth of the words or actions. Kindness without truth or, as Pope Benedict XVI says in his last encyclical letter Caritas in veritate (Love in Truth or Charity in Truth), charity without truth becomes meaningless sentimentality. True and lasting peace is only possible with justice and vice-versa. Truth and justice depend on each other, and ultimately our salvation depends on how justly we speak and act.

Our Gospel reading today, from Matthew, is similar to our Psalm response in that Jesus, like the Psalmist, groups together key values: Truth, justice, and reconciliation. On a superficial level, it may seem most true and most just to exact revenge upon somebody who wrongs us with a clever insult: Raqa‒ “You fool”! But ultimately these kinds of attacks against the person (the Latin phrase is ad hominem) destroy more than the logic of such arguments; they destroy the person him or herself against whom they are directed. This is why Jesus compares these kinds of personal attacks to murder. Jesus’ words here may sound harsh to our ears, but increasingly his teaching here, I believe, is apt in our culture in which the capacity for debate and legitimate disagreement is being eroded by recourse to simplistic and destructive ad hominem attacks. And, Jesus goes on to say, holding angry grudges, which often take the form of passive-aggressiveness and gossip to avoid open hostility, is no better than open personal attacks. In fact these are frequently more destructive than open attacks.

How, then, are we to mend the damage caused by attacks against one another’s person, open or not? Reconciliation, Jesus says, must be pre-emptive; let us not wait for one who has wronged us to seek our forgiveness. Pre-emptive reconciliation means to stifle our pride enough to say clearly to another person, whatever the discord or disagreement, that we desire the best, the good, for our sister or brother. We desire, in no uncertain terms, good relationships with everybody, based on recognition of the dignity of the other person as much as our own; based on kindness; based on justice; based on charity or love without which any truth we speak or act is not fully true. We desire one another’s salvation.

The better we are at expressing these desires for one another, the more our Christian faith becomes authentically other-centered and ultimately God-centered as opposed to self-centered. But, almost paradoxically, only then does our self flourish fully. Only then shall “kindness and truth… meet, justice and peace… kiss, truth… spring out of the earth and justice… look down from heaven[;] justice… walk before [us], and salvation, along the way of [our] steps.”

Homily for Wednesday, 14 June 2017– Ferial

Wednesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 3:4-11; Psalm 99:5, 6, 7, 8, 9; Matthew 5:17-19

What might we make of the contrast between how the law is understood in our first reading today, from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, and in our Gospel, from Matthew?

St. Paul speaks of the law‒ as in Matthew’s Gospel, in 2 Corinthians St. Paul is referring to the Law of Moses or laws of the Jewish faith, much of which has influenced our Christian faith and law‒ or “the letter” in rather dark terms. St. Paul calls “the letter” of the Jewish, then Judeo-Christian, law “the ministry of death, carved on letters on stone.” He contrasts this written-on-stone letter of the law with the “ministry of the Spirit” or “ministry of righteousness.”

Near the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that spans three full chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, five through seven, we hear Jesus affirm the law in much more positive terms than St. Paul seems to do in 2 Corinthians. Jesus has “come not to abolish but to fulfill” the law, he says. “Not the smallest letter or part of a letter will pass from the law,” which would suggest that, in spite of St. Paul’s view of the law, there are at least elements, if not all of the law that are worth holding onto and obeying.

And so which is it: Is the law something to be cast aside as “the ministry of death” or “of condemnation,” or something that is life-giving and to be maintained and obeyed?

I think we risk making a serious mistake if we try to or think we need to choose one of these perspectives on the law over the other. We miss the point of both St. Paul and Jesus if we understand law (whether of our faith or secular law, that of the state) as something to be disregarded as limiting our freedom or, worse yet, dealing us “death” or “condemnation,” or as something life-giving and requiring blind obedience for its own sake.

What, then, is the common point St. Paul and Jesus make in our readings we hear today? I suggest that St. Paul’s and Jesus’ common point is that the law is good, but only if it points us to something‒ or, better yet, somebody, that is, God‒ greater than and more “glorious,” in St. Paul’s words, than itself.

Obedience to law, religious or secular (even the word “obedience” is from the same Latin root for listening attentively), does not mean a kind of slavishness to “the good old days” when all seemed morally, liturgically,  or otherwise certain; when there were clear rules governing what we, especially as good Catholics, ought and ought not to do without exception. The reality is that “the good old days” never existed and never will exist or, as my Basilian brother of blessed memory here at St. Kateri, Fr. Peter Etlinger, once said, “Don’t tell me about the ‘good old days.’ I was there; they weren’t so good”!

Neither is the law a means to strike at and divide ourselves from those who, as we see them, differ or disagree with us on various matters, or even who behave less morally than we do. Instead, only if we understand and live law as a kind of light on our path to God, to salvation, will it be “fulfilled,” as Jesus says, and will it become, as St. Paul says, “the ministry of the Spirit” who always exceeds our written letter; our expectations; our imagination.

Homily for Tuesday, 13 June 2017– Memorial of St. Anthony of Padua

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Psalm 119:129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135; Matthew 5:13-16

Tuesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Have any of us ever wondered how saints become associated with particular causes, such as finding lost items in the case of St. Anthony of Padua?

There are so many stories and legends, sayings and sermons connected with St. Anthony, so that I think it would be quite reasonable for us to wonder how he became the go-to saint when we have lost something. Of course, St. Anthony is rightly the patron of many other causes, too. He is called the “Evangelical Doctor”; of the thirty-six recognized “doctors” or master teachers by their writings and example in our Church’s history, St. Anthony is renowned as an evangelist, somebody who spread our faith by his preaching and gentle, humble presence that echoed the presence of Christ to the people. For his legendary efforts at preaching to fish (I hope to try this next time I go fishing!), St. Anthony is the patron of many things marine and water-related. He is the patron of his native Portugal and of Brazil. But St. Anthony is connected, far more often it seems than with other causes, to lost people or objects, and is the patron of objects that become easily lost, like mail (and mail carriers).

But why is St. Anthony most often recognized as the patron of lost objects? It all started with a Franciscan novice stealing his prayer book, with all the notes St. Anthony was using to teach the novices in his care. Those novices… I was once a novice, although I never stole my novice director’s prayer book! St. Anthony prayed, and so the novice was moved to return his prayer book.

I am not complaining about St. Anthony being too exclusively associated with lost objects. Yesterday, St. Anthony came to the aid of this absent-minded professor who thought, when leaving the house, that I would leave all my keys I did not need on the corner of my desk at the rectory so I would not lose them. Indeed, I did leave my keys on the corner of my desk… in the office I am using at our St. Cecilia Church site, not at the rectory. I think “it is right and just,” as we say, then, that I (and we together) celebrate St. Anthony. If St. Peter were given the power of the keys, St. Anthony has the gift of finding those keys when we lose them!

But may we also pray through St. Anthony as the one who not only helps to find lost objects, but to find us when we become lost, in error or sin;  when we fail to be, in the words of our Gospel today, “salt of the earth, [like] a city set on a mountain,” or a lamp “set on a lampstand”;  when instead our lamps become hidden, dim, or, worse yet, lost. St. Anthony of Padua, you are a beloved example of gentle evangelization; of calling the lost to the fullest practice of our faith. Find us when we are lost, place our lamps on lampstands; make us again “salt of the earth and light of the world.” Guide us toward “our heavenly Father,” whose glory you and we serve, and help us to light the way for one another, as you did, humbly and faithfully, through Christ our Lord.

Homily for Friday, 9 June 2017– Memorial of St. Ephrem

Readings of the day: Tobit 11:5-17; Psalm 146:1b-2, 6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10; Mark 12: 35-37

Friday of the 9th week in Ordinary Time

Has anybody here ever heard something or somebody and been delighted? Perhaps we have been to a great concert, or heard a rousing speech. For me, whenever I am in our St. Kateri Parish rectory at Christ the King, or when I visit St. Kateri School and greet the students in the morning, I hear the squeals of children in the school playground, I exchange high-fives with them at the doors and try to remember as many of their and their parents’ names after two years away now, and I hear and try to answer their often brilliant questions, and maybe try to teach them some French… All this (and children in general; I am also an uncle to a delightful niece, Molly, and nephew, Liam) fills me with special delight! I have enjoyed my two years in Paris, although among a few things I miss about St. Kateri, being with our children and young people are among the most significant.

“The great crowd” who heard Jesus teach “in the temple area,” as we hear in Mark’s Gospel today, had the experience of being delighted: “The great crowd heard this with delight.” What did Jesus say that day “in the temple area” that so delighted the crowd? Let me suggest that what so delighted the crowd who heard Jesus had less to do with what he said than what he, the “Son of David”; the Son of God, did.

The crowd saw and heard something royal from Jesus; something that reminded them of Israel’s great King David, and yet something more. Jesus, drawing upon a title “the scribes” had given him, “Son of David,” recalls David when speaking of himself. The crowd sees and hears that, like David, Jesus has been “inspired by the Holy Spirit.” Jesus’ words and his works have God’s own authority behind them. The God who inspired and gave authority to David’s rule and words gives the same authority to Jesus when he speaks the same words: “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.’”

What does Jesus mean when he speaks these words of King David? As in Jesus’ time, perhaps too many people today imagine Jesus, and want him to be, a great military ruler. For too many people, then as now, including too many people in positions of power, to “place [our] enemies under [our] feet” means to crush them by military force or by economic oppression as immediately as possible.

But this is not the way of Jesus or of his kingship. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not the “prosperity gospel,” the might-makes-right gospel, or the gospel of terror and oppression. At best, responding to the violence of an enemy with violence will give us temporary delight, while the enemy actually persists and often more enemies are created through violence.

Jesus’ words and works, even more than those of King David, are experienced with more permanent delight by “the great crowd.” We are still delighted in Jesus today, so much so that we gather here in this space, more than two thousand years after Jesus spoke near the temple, to worship and celebrate him. And yet our mission as Christians is to move from this worship celebration to remind the world authentically of Jesus by our words and works, so that, because of Jesus, our world may delight in us.

Homily for Thursday, 8 June 2017– Ferial

Thursday of the 9th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 6:10-11, 7:1bcde, 9-17, 8:4-9a; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Mark 12:28-34

How many of us enjoy reading novels? I am more of a non-fiction than fiction reader, even when reading for pleasure, outside of studies or spiritual reading. And yet one of my brother Basilian priests I have lived with in community will often announce, as he is going to bed at night, that he will go and enjoy some of his “trashy novel” before falling asleep. Whether he is actually about to read a novel or the quality of the novel are irrelevant; the humorous effect of the “trashy novel” announcement is what matters.

The Book of Tobit is among a few legend or “novelette”-type books of the Bible. And, if I dare say, although I am no expert on Tobit, the more I read and pray with Tobit, the more this book fascinates me. Certainly Tobit is no “trashy novel”; it is a legendary yet profound story of love, of suffering, of mercy, and of God’s presence in all these events surrounding Tobit, his family, and his people of Israel who are in exile in Babylon.

Today, within the Book of Tobit, we are treated to what I think is one of the Bible’s most beautiful prayers: That of Sarah, daughter of Edna and Raguel, and Tobiah, son of Tobit, as they are about to go to bed on the night of their wedding. If we follow Tobit, we know that Sarah’s and Tobiah’s wedding night was no time for either of them to read themselves to sleep with a “trashy novel.” Sarah had been married seven times before marrying Tobiah. Each time, her husbands had been killed on their wedding night by the “demon Asmodeus.” And so, instead of reading themselves to sleep with novels of dubious quality (or, if this had taken place today, would they have watched television or been surfing the internet on their laptops, tablets, or smartphones?), Sarah and Tobiah pray together. “The angel Raphael,” whose name incidentally means, “God heals,” has already promised to protect Tobiah from meeting the same end as Sarah’s previous seven husbands.

Of course,  I have a special reason to love the prayer of Sarah and Tobiah that we hear today. A week from Saturday my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler will celebrate ten years of marriage. The first reading they chose for their wedding celebration included the prayer of Sarah and Tobiah we hear today.

And so, especially for the married couples, future married couples, and everybody among us still discerning prayerfully a possible vocation to marriage, please let me echo the prayer of Sarah and Tobiah for you, perhaps several times between now and when I go to bed tonight. And I suggest that you pray this prayer for one another: “Blessed are you, O God of our fathers, praised be your name forever and ever.” May our God “who made Adam and… gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support” bless and keep our married couples and those who are engaged or discerning marriage. May they be strengthened and kept healthy and happy for the “noble purpose” of reflecting your face; your mercy; your love to one another in a world that often leaves our married and discerning couples feeling “alone,” against your will for your people, O Lord. “Call down your mercy upon” our current and future married couples, “and allow [them] to live together to a happy old age.”

“Amen, amen.”

Homily for Monday, 5 June 2017‒ Memorial of St. Boniface

Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12

What do Tobit of the Biblical book named for him and of the first reading we have just heard, St. Boniface, a sister in a religious order, and (I hope and pray) we have in common?

I do not intend this question to be the beginning of a strange riddle. And yet might the Book of Tobit, and the reading we hear today from it, seem a bit strange if not morbid to us? Tobit is written in the form of a legend or “novelette.” I am not sure if anybody here is an expert on the Book of Tobit; I am certainly not. Tobit features “intrigue,  mysterious deaths, passionate love, and [even] a fish who heals.” Among books of the Bible, Tobit is quite a page turner!

Today we hear of a “kinsman” of Tobit and his son Tobiah who is found murdered at the hands of the Assyrian King Sennacherib, the enemy of Tobit’s and Tobiah’s people of Israel. When Tobit hears from Tobiah of the murder, he sets out to bury the person who has been killed. To bury the dead of Israel at the time of Assyrian control over Israel was punishable by death, and so by burying his kinsman Tobit was risking his own life. Also, not only does Tobit but himself in mortal danger by what we Catholics consider one of the corporal works of mercy, burying the dead, but he risks— and receives— mockery by his own people! Tobit’s neighbors say mockingly of him as he buries his dead countryman, “He is still not afraid”!

Some or many of us may know of the legend of St. Boniface, whose feast we celebrate today, and Thor’s oak tree. In the legend, Boniface is mocked by the pagan worshippers of the god Thor in what is now Germany. The pagans say to Boniface that, if he were to cut down Thor’s oak tree as he wishes to build a church dedicated to St. Peter, Thor will strike him dead. And so Boniface takes up their challenge. He cuts down Thor’s tree, aided by a gentle wind in finishing off the great oak, and he builds the church dedicated to St. Peter. The pagans find Boniface still alive, with the church built from the oak tree, and so they ask Boniface for Christian baptism. Boniface, like Tobit, was “not afraid,” whether of mockery or of the non-god Thor.

The sister in a religious order I spoke of at first is my maternal great aunt, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle, a Holy Cross Sister who passed away this past November. Aunt Jeanne was a fine teacher (instruction, especially of those of weak or no faith, is for us a spiritual work of mercy). She taught in some of the most dangerous places in the world, like Haiti and Zaire (now the still-dangerous Democratic Republic of the Congo). She had a stint teaching biker gang members recently released from prison in Canada so that they might not return to lives of crime after their prison terms ended. Some of Aunt Jeanne’s greatest friends and protectors were those reformed gangsters! She, like Boniface and Tobit, was “not afraid.”

How do we fit in, then, among the likes of Tobit, St. Boniface, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc? What are we willing to risk to act with mercy; to build up the Church, one another, in our world that is still often chaotic and even violent: Martyrdom, or at least some ridicule; friendship with a few gangsters? Would that more people might mock us, for we are “still not afraid”!

Homélie du lundi, 22 mai 2016– Lundi de la 6ème semaine du Temps Pascal

Ste. Rita de Cascia, mémoire facultative

Lectures du jour: Actes des Apôtres 16, 11-15; Psaume 149, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6a.9b; Jean 15, 26-16, 4a

Combien de sens en connaît-on du mot « esprit » ou des mots similaires ? On discerne au moins deux sens d’ « esprit(s) » dans nos lectures d’aujourd’hui.

Commençons par notre lecture des Actes des Apôtres, d’où on entend à propos de « Lydie, une négociante en étoffes de pourpre » que « le Seigneur lui ouvrit l’esprit ». Suite à cela, Lydie se fait baptiser, ensemble avec « tous les gens de sa maison ». Laissons-nous alors connaître quelques détails supplémentaires sur Lydie : Le fait qu’elle soit décrite comme « une négociante en étoffes de pourpre » nous suggère que Lydie était assez riche en biens matériels. Elle aurait bien pu être à l’époque la propriétaire ou de la famille propriétaire d’une assez grande maison qui servait à accueillir des assemblées pour la célébration de l’Eucharistie. En ce temps-là, on n’avait pas des églises glorieuses comme aujourd’hui, mais l’Eucharistie se célébrait souvent dans des grandes maisons des personnes riches comme Lydie. Les « étoffes de pourpre » que Lydie vendait étaient de la couleur royale ; le pourpre était alors une teinture rare et chère.

Passons quelques instants à notre Évangile. Là encore, on entend parler d’un « esprit ». Eh, bien, là Jésus, à travers St. Jean, parle de l’Esprit Saint, « le Défenseur… l’Esprit de vérité qui procède du Père », celui qui « rendra témoignage en (sa) faveur ». Si je me permets un petit recours au monde académique, le mot traduit ici en français comme « Défenseur » serait mieux traduit comme « Paraclet » à mon avis mais, si l’on sait plus ou moins bien c’est quoi (ou qui) un « défenseur », c’est quoi (ou qui) un « Paraclet » ? Cette appellation signifie littéralement quelqu’un qui nous appelle depuis notre côté. St. Jean conçoit alors l’Esprit Saint comme celui qui est toujours à côté de nous, qui nous appelle, qui nous protège et nous défend comme un(e) meilleur(e) ami(e). Bien sûr, St. Jean nous donne une image très riche de l’Esprit Saint !

Actuellement, on connaît plusieurs esprits moins saints que l’Esprit Saint, ce qui ne veut pas dire que ces autres esprits sont forcément mauvais. Entre autres, on appelle quelques boissons alcoolisées des « spiritueux ». En modération, ces boissons peuvent nous aider à nous détendre mais, en excès, ils peuvent devenir une idole, quelque chose qui prend la place de Dieu, l’Esprit Saint qui se tient à nos côtés, ou bien au moins une habitude nocive jusqu’à une addiction.

Eh, bien, revenons sur le sujet de Lydie des Actes des Apôtres, celle dont « le Seigneur lui ouvrit l’esprit ». Là, l’« esprit » dans le sens biblique était synonyme avec l’ensemble d’un être vivant. Lydie se trouve alors ouverte, éclairée intégralement quand on entend que « le Seigneur lui ouvrit l’esprit ».

On pourrait dire alors que, par son baptême, l’Esprit Saint « ouvrit l’esprit » de Lydie, et on pourrait dire la même chose de chacun et de chacune de nous : À travers notre baptême et la pratique de notre foi chrétienne, l’Esprit Saint nous ouvre l’esprit, et nous donne une richesse bien plus sublime que des « étoffes de pourpre » ou n’importe quel bien matériel.